UN envoy calls for highest level Myanmar probe

GENEVA: The United Nations rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar called Thursday for the creation of a Commission of Inquiry (COI), the UN’s highest-level probe, to investigate abuses in the country.

Rights envoy Yanghee Lee made the appeal in a report submitted to the UN rights council, currently holding its main annual session in Geneva.

She urged the 47-member body to establish a COI “to investigate the systematic, structural, and institutional discrimination in policy, law and practice, as well long-standing persecution, against the Rohingya and other minorities in Rakhine State.”

She said the probe should focus on violence in 2012, 2014 and the army crackdown on Rohingya Muslims in northern Rakhine since October.